Let’s say for a moment that the NHL has decided to add two more franchises, like they did in 2000 (Minnesota and Columbus). The first thing they do is hold an expansion draft for the two teams, which are to be located in Hamilton and Kansas City.

26 of the 28 teams existing in the league at the time of the draft were each allowed to protect either one goaltender, five defensemen, and nine forwards or two goaltenders, three defensemen, and seven forwards.
For teams protecting only one goaltender, there was no experience requirement for those left unprotected. For teams protecting two goaltenders, each goaltender left unprotected must have appeared in either 10 NHL games in the 1999–2000 season or 25 games in the 1998–99 season and 1999–2000 seasons combined. A goaltender had to be in net for at least 31 minutes in each game for the game to be counted against these totals.
At least one defenceman left unprotected by each team had to have appeared in at least 40 games in the 1999–2000 season or 70 games in the 1998–99 season and 1999–2000 seasons combined. At least two forwards left unprotected by each team had to have met the same requirements.
52 players were chosen in the draft, two from each participating franchise. Only one goaltender or one defensemen could be selected from each franchise.

Additionally, all unsigned draft picks (except picks drafted from Europe in 1996 or earlier who remain with their European clubs) and players with two years or less of professional experience are considered protected.

Here then is the list of Oilers players that would be at risk of getting selected:

Eligible Forwards

Gilbert Brule

Alexander Bumagin

Ales Hemsky

Shawn Horcoff

Jean-Francois Jacques

Steve MacIntyre

Alexei Mikhnov

Evgeny Muratov

Chris Minard

Ethan Moreau

Robert Nilsson

Linus Omark

Patrick O’Sullivan

Dustin Penner

Fernando Pisani

Ryan Potulny

Marc Pouliot

Liam Reddox

Rob Schremp

Ryan Stone

Zack Stortini

Eligible Defensemen

Tom Gilbert

Denis Grebeshkov

Matt Nickerson

Ladislav Smid

Sheldon Souray

Steve Staios

Jason Strudwick

Lubomir Visnovsky

Eligible Goaltenders

Bjorn Bjurling

Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers

Devan Dubnyk

Nikolai Khabibulin

*I’m not 100% sure on Linus Omark and Ryan O’Marra, but for the purpose of this exercise O’Marra will be considered exempt, since I believe O’Marra’s brief AHL playoff stint in 2005-06 doesn’t count as a year of professional hockey, and Omark will be considered eligible because of his professional experience in Europe.

The List

Who should the Oilers protect from this hypothetical expansion draft? I’m curious to see what the consensus is in the comments, but I’ll do up my list now.

First of all, the strength of the Oilers current group is its defensive corps, so I’ve decided to protect nine forwards, five defenseman and one goaltender rather than seven, three and two.

Protected Forwards

I’m going to start with the forwards, since they’re relatively easy:

Ales Hemsky

Shawn Horcoff

Ethan Moreau

Patrick O’Sullivan

Dustin Penner

Fernando Pisani

Those six were obvious, and the next three comes down to a choice between a group of Gilbert Brule, J-F Jacques, Robert Nilsson, Linus Omark, Marc Pouliot, Rob Schremp and Zack Stortini. Jacques’ injury concerns, Nilsson’s salary and redundancy on the roster, and Schremp’s stagnation lead me to eliminate them. I also make the difficult choice to keep Zack Stortini off of the protected list because while I love his work ethic and willingness, I can’t ever see him elevated much higher than the fourth line. My final three protected forwards are:

Gilbert Brule

Linus Omark

Marc Pouliot

Protected Defensemen

This part of the list I found incredibly easy. I would protect the following five defensemen:

Protected Goaltender

Nikolai Khabibulin

This was easily the hardest part of the list. Bjorn Bjurling was an easy player to leave unprotected, while Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers came next because he is neither ready for an NHL starting role nor does he have Devan Dubnyk’s potential. That left me a choice between Nikolai Khabibulin and Devan Dubnyk.

Nikolai Khabibulin would be an obvious choice if his contract wasn’t so long (four years) and impossible to get out of (over 35) and there weren’t other goaltenders (Biron, Fernandez) still on the market. That said, I would probably opt to protect him and expose Dubnyk unless I could hammer out an agreement in principle with Martin Biron.

Since I can also only lose one goaltender, I’d work hard to try and convince teams to take Deslauriers instead of Dubnyk. At the 2000 Draft, San Jose made trades with both Minnesota and Columbus to keep them from selecting Evgeni Nabokov, and since my team could only lose one goaltender, I’d try and make a deal if a team elected to take Dubnyk over Deslauriers.

The Unprotected

Alexander Bumagin

J-F Jacques

Steve MacIntyre

Alexei Mikhnov

Evgeny Muratov

Chris Minard

Robert Nilsson

Ryan Potulny

Liam Reddox

Rob Schremp

Ryan Stone

Zack Stortini
---

Matt Nickerson

Steve Staios

Jason Strudwick
---

Bjorn Bjurling

Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers

Devan Dubnyk

As the G.M. of both Hamilton and Kansas City, I would make the following selections:

Hamilton acquires Rob Schremp for agreeing not to select a goaltender.

Kansas City acquires Cody Wild for agreeing not to select Devan Dubnyk, and selects Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers.

Hamilton selects Robert Nilsson.

Jonathan Willis is a freelance writer.
He currently works for Oilers Nation, Sportsnet, the Edmonton Journal and Bleacher Report.
He's co-written three books and worked for myriad websites, including Grantland, ESPN, The Score, and Hockey Prospectus. He was previously the founder and managing editor of Copper & Blue.

To start, all discussion of possible expansion by NHL executives should be grounds for death by firing squad.

But I have no real issue with your list of protected vs unprotected players. Maybe I'd consider leaving Penner unprotected due to Salary concerns.

That makes me wonder if a possible condition of any expansion drafts to come will include a clause where at least one unprotected player from each team has to have a Cap hit of over X million dollars so that the expansion team is capable of reaching the Cap floor.

@ Sandra:
Khabibulin would likely be the best tender unprotected and would undoubtedly be taken by an expansion team who would need a solid tender for the next 3-4 years before their own Goalie prospects become semi-viable options. Not to mention those expansion teams would be filled with fringe guys who wont make lots of coin for the first few years, so they would have Cap space. AND if the team was in Hamilton it would likely be one of the top earning clubs in the league. I'm sure they could afford him.

-Gilbert
-Grebs
-Souray
-Visnovsky
-Smid
(By far the easiest part of the exercise.)

-Dubnyk
(If they grabbed Khabibulin, I'd then sign Biron.)
____________________
Now, having looked at your list, I chose Stortini over Omark, because I see him having a Buchberger-like career. I think he's going to be an important part of this team for a long time.

I chose Dubnyk assuming a deal with Biron is possible. I suppose you're right -- I'd probably need an understanding with Biron to be comfortable losing Khabibulin.

I agree with your list except for the fact that I'd drop Moreau and Omark and keep Nilsson and Stortini.

Heck, Stortini is darned near as good a player as Moreau except he's much cheaper and not rapidly turning into the Frankenstein monster. Omark, meanwhile, is the size of a shot glass and would rather play in Russia than the AHL. That may change when the KHL completely collapses, but I'm still not convinced he's anything more than a flash in the pan.

Khabibulin might actually go in an expansion draft if he were exposed, just because expansion teams tend to have lots of cap room and they might consider a big-name, league-average goaltender a good way to put bums in seats regardless of his hit.

Why protect Penner in an expansion draft? The Oil seem quite keen to dump his contract anyways. Keep JDD protected, especially since he's had glimpses of being a longer term option for the copper and blue.

I would probably choose the 9 forwards, 5 defencemen, and 1 goalie as well. However, I would protect those players with potential to either step into the NHL right away or have the talent to one day become a regular in the NHL level. This list would be my choice:

Forward:
Gilbert Brule: still very young and plenty of potential
Ales Hemsky: obvious to keep
Shawn Horcoff: veteran, who's not a liability on the ice
Robert Nilsson: might be in MacT's doghouse, but may flourish with Quinn and Renney
Linus Omark: obvious talent and would be a great fit with the team
Patrick O'Sullivan: another great potential player who can conceivably excel in the NHL
Fernando Pisani: clutch goal scorer who can bring veteran leadership along with Horcoff and play the checking lines
Rob Schremp: loads of offensive potential still, which cannot be ignored
Zack Stortini: young and tough.

Defencemen:
Tom Gilbert: nice and steady with offensive potential
Denis Grebeshkov: maturing into one of the best two d-man
Ladislav Smid: has potential to become even better
Sheldon Souray: veteran, who has underrated skills in his own end
Lubomir Visnovsky: great puck mover and can run PP

Goalie:
Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers: sure he's young and doesn't have too much NHL experience yet, but he has to start somewhere. If he doesn't work out, there's always free agent goalies to pursue in the offseason. Or, the team can wait until Olivier Roy is developed. However, I think we're not giving Deslauriers enough credit. I'm not totally sold on Dubnyk -- too inconsistent.

all bad contracts are unprotected. easy enough. "you want crap, take crap. saves us cap space". likely, an expansion team wouldnt want to take on salary so the players probably wouldnt even get picked.

dude are you referring to last season as 'inconsistent' on Dubnyk's part? Or just his career in general?

Because if you are looking at last year as a guide to how talented or consistent Dubnyk is, you have to look at it from Dubnyk's position, or any goalie that would be in net for the Falcons
1) the offensive sucked the big one, no goals in favour of the falcons, they'd get maybe half the shots of whatever their opponent was getting.
2) defensive was even worse usually giving up AT LEAST 40 shots an evening

He's not perfect I'll give you that, there's a few that he'd want back. Those 58 losses or something look awful for a record, but you can't hold him to all of them when you look at how bad the team played.

Even with all those losses, he still managed to make the three stars. And when Sabourin played, the Falcons didn't magically start winning and getting shut-outs. They still lost.

I think I'm going to stop myself now... the point is don't write him off as inconsistent. Anyway, he still has at least a year to banish any doubts of his skill from your mind.

J. W. you must be severly bored. You gotta get yourself a hottie to hang out with by the pool for the summer.

Or if you still want to kill time on Oilers Hypotheticals why don't you hypothesize on what would happen with the contraction of two teams, because that is more likely than an expansion given the state of the teams in Southern USA.

@ Alex:
I'm not trying to discredit Dubnyk at all. I understand that he played for a poor team, and he was probably one of the lone bright spots, along with Potulny, on the Falcons. On the other hand, I haven't seen him steal any games by himself. Do I think Deslauriers should be the backup for some time in the NHL? Yes, I do. At the same time, I'm thinking about Khabibulin's age, term of contract, and amount we're giving him. I just think we would be better off by throwing Deslauriers in as No. 1 and leaving Khabibulin and Dubnyk unprotected. Besides, I highly doubt both will get snatched anyway.

1) There would be no need to protect Khabibulin, at his age, and with his contract. You protect Dubnyk.

2) There would also be no reason to protect Pisani or Moreau. Pisani is a year away from being an UFA, and Moreau is two years away. With the reduced age of unrestricted free agency, one protects young guys over older soon to be UFA.

Theoretically wouldnt cutting out two underperforming teams bring the average revenues up, increasing the Cap.

And if those two teams were terrible draws for TV (which they likely would be) it would increase the average draw of an NHL team in the ratings. And once those 2 teams were contracted the best players from those teams would be redistributed amongst the league, creating a better product to sell to both TV and the ticket buyings fans.

Maybe contraction would bring in revenue. maybe. There would not be an contraction fee paid to the league like there would be under expansion, but that's just short term stuff.

There would not be an contraction fee paid to the league like there would be under expansion, but that’s just short term stuff.

These are not men capable of risking millions of dollars on the long term picture.

If you tell most of the owners in the league that they have a choice between 200-million split 30 ways right now (and a Hamilton franchise alone would cost at least that) or possible future revenue years from now, they only make one choice.

These are not men capable of risking millions of dollars on the long term picture.

And yet they risked (and lost) millions of dollars by watering down their talent pool. ESPN walked away from a product they couldnt sell anymore. And how could they with Finals in Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Florida (panthers) where there was no connection to the casual fan? More stars in some key locations makes money for the league.

200 million over 30 teams isnt all that much. Not quite 7 million. 2 less teams mean there's a better chance to make the playoffs for the other teams and a better chance to increase revenues. I think the league has gotten to the point where it might make more money to cut back than to move forward.

Jonathan Willis wrote:
These are not men capable of risking millions of dollars on the long term picture.
And yet they risked (and lost) millions of dollars by watering down their talent pool. ESPN walked away from a product they couldnt sell anymore. And how could they with Finals in Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Florida (panthers) where there was no connection to the casual fan? More stars in some key locations makes money for the league.
200 million over 30 teams isnt all that much. Not quite 7 million. 2 less teams mean there’s a better chance to make the playoffs for the other teams and a better chance to increase revenues. I think the league has gotten to the point where it might make more money to cut back than to move forward.

@ Ogden Brother:
You dont think that the NHL is watered down further than it should be? You dont think that an inferior product led to the loss of interest in the US, and therefore the loss of a quality TV deal?

@ Ogden Brother:
You dont think that the NHL is watered down further than it should be? You dont think that an inferior product led to the loss of interest in the US, and therefore the loss of a quality TV deal?
I dont think that it’s that big of a leap.

No, I don't think it led to a lack of interest in the US, in fact I'd say their is the same (or more) interest in the US that their has always been. I also think the league expanded to trying to land the big US TV deal... And I'd be willing to bet they did so at the reccomendation of the TV providers.

@ Ogden Brother:
There was a time when the NBA was below the NHL in terms of popularity, it isnt even close now. Whether or not the league expanded in order to get a better TV deal doesnt matter, what has happened suggests it was a poor decision. They and the TV providers were wrong and it cost the NHL lots of money and accessibility. The fact of the matter remains that the 28 other owners have no reason to support failing franchises in bad markets. They are like a cancer that should be cut out of the league.

@ Ogden Brother:
There was a time when the NBA was below the NHL in terms of popularity, it isnt even close now. Whether or not the league expanded in order to get a better TV deal doesnt matter, what has happened suggests it was a poor decision. They and the TV providers were wrong and it cost the NHL lots of money and accessibility. The fact of the matter remains that the 28 other owners have no reason to support failing franchises in bad markets. They are like a cancer that should be cut out of the league.

And again, your just assuming that expansion = no TV deal.

Also, remember it wasn't long ago that the Oil were one of those cancers (and could be again in the not to distant future). Careful what you wish for.

I'm amazed how quickly we all are to deem Khabibulin expendable simply because of his contract. We have a proven veteran starter who's won nearly everything there is to win in hockey. He is one of the best goaltenders in the league. He's even better than Roli the Goalie himself (!)

Do you want to know what a bad contract for a goaltender is?
Look at what the Flames are paying 'Kipper'. Over 6 million is a bad cap hit for any goaltender, let alone a goaltender who gets outplayed most nights.

I’m amazed how quickly we all are to deem Khabibulin expendable simply because of his contract. We have a proven veteran starter who’s won nearly everything there is to win in hockey. He is one of the best goaltenders in the league. He’s even better than Roli the Goalie himself (!)
Do you want to know what a bad contract for a goaltender is?
Look at what the Flames are paying ‘Kipper’. Over 6 million is a bad cap hit for any goaltender, let alone a goaltender who gets outplayed most nights.

That's the name of the game here, free cap space > quality hockey players.

expansion is good for one thing. cleaning the books form the other 30 teams. with the cap going down, and alot of teams getting in trouble cap wise, it could potentially help balance out the rest of the league. it wont be by alot. but if there were 2 new teams and they each take on about $40M thats an average $2.4M off each clubs books.

- who here thinks the Oilers should consider signing Sykora as a PP specialist to replace what Kotalik would have brought?

- i think Cogliano for Harntell would be a good trade for both teams. Gives Philly a young cheap player, Oilers get rid of a small center and get a tough winger who can score. Thoughts? Dump Staios salary to pay the difference..

one other thing, don't those of you like Lowetide who think the Oilers are giving up on the future by trading Cogliano for Heatley (as part of the package) not realizing that it makes no sense for the Oielrs to keep both Gagner and Cogliano long term? You cannot have two small centers as number one and two if you are going to be a good team. If Cogliano cannot play the wing, it makes sense to trade him for a grittier, goal scoring winger who is still young. Heatley is 28. Hartnell is 27. Cogliano will be 23 this season and will be getting a big raise in one year. He will be a UFA in three years after this season, so what is the big deal about keeping him because we drafted him? By the time he is a true star, he will be UFA and may leave anyway....